These datasets list the U.S. Senators who served in the 112th Congress, which met from January 3, 2011 to January 3, 2013. Although the Senate has 100 seats, 103 persons served during this period due to two resignations and a death. However, the third replacement occurred only two days before the end and cast no votes on the bills investigated here. Hence, the number of Senators analyzed is 102.
CQ Almanac identified 25 key bills on which the Senate voted during the 112th Congress, and which Democratic and Republican Senators voting “yea” and “nay” on each proposal.
Lastly, we obtained data on campaign contributions made by 92 PACs from the Open Secrets Website. We recorded all contributions made during the 2008, 2010, and 2012 election campaigns to the 102 persons who were Senators in the 112th Congress. The vast majority of PAC contributions to a candidate during a campaign was for $10,000 (the legal maximum is $5,000 each for a primary and the general election). We aggregated the contributions across all three electoral cycles, then dichotomized the sums into no contribution (0) and any contribution (1).
#> # A labelled, weighted, two-mode network with 114 nodes and 2791 ties
#> # A tibble: 114 x 2
#> type name
#> <lgl> <chr>
#> 1 FALSE Baucus
#> 2 FALSE Begich
#> 3 FALSE Bennet
#> 4 FALSE Blumenthal
#> 5 FALSE Boxer
#> 6 FALSE BrownSh
#> # i 108 more rows
#> # A tibble: 2,791 x 3
#> from to weight
#> <int> <int> <dbl>
#> 1 1 52 1
#> 2 1 53 1
#> 3 1 54 1
#> 4 1 55 1
#> 5 1 56 1
#> 6 1 57 1
#> # i 2,785 more rows#> # A labelled, weighted, two-mode network with 134 nodes and 3675 ties
#> # A tibble: 134 x 2
#> type name
#> <lgl> <chr>
#> 1 FALSE Alexander
#> 2 FALSE Ayotte
#> 3 FALSE Barrasso
#> 4 FALSE Baucus
#> 5 FALSE Blunt
#> 6 FALSE Boozman
#> # i 128 more rows
#> # A tibble: 3,675 x 3
#> from to weight
#> <int> <int> <dbl>
#> 1 1 64 1
#> 2 1 66 1
#> 3 1 67 1
#> 4 1 70 1
#> 5 1 71 1
#> 6 1 72 1
#> # i 3,669 more rows#> # A labelled, weighted, two-mode network with 52 nodes and 614 ties
#> # A tibble: 52 x 2
#> type name
#> <lgl> <chr>
#> 1 FALSE Baucus
#> 2 FALSE Cardin
#> 3 FALSE Carper
#> 4 FALSE Casey
#> 5 FALSE Collins
#> 6 FALSE Feinstein
#> # i 46 more rows
#> # A tibble: 614 x 3
#> from to weight
#> <int> <int> <dbl>
#> 1 1 21 1
#> 2 1 22 1
#> 3 1 23 1
#> 4 1 24 1
#> 5 1 25 1
#> 6 1 26 1
#> # i 608 more rowsKnoke, David, Mario Diani, James Hollway, and Dimitris C Christopoulos. 2021. Multimodal Political Networks. Cambridge University Press. Cambridge University Press.